In Darkling's own words
by fanTartist
Summary: Darkling's own narrative of what happened on the Fold
1. Chapter 1

**This story is Darkling's narrative of the battle on the Fold with Alina**

As Mal dropped to the ground, a scream erupted from her lips, a scream so loud that it echoed across the whole of Ravka and pierced through my heart. I saw the agony on her face. My thousand years of loneliness had rendered me immune to emotions, yet looking at her grief defied all that. I felt a strange sudden urge to go and wrap my arms around her, console her, caress her, wipe off her tears, do anything to shake off that troubled look from her face. I took a step forward but suddenly she looked up.

"You were right, Darkling. You took everything from me, everything I knew, and everything I loved. But this is not how it ends. Not like this. This dark night will haunt your dreams forever. My face will haunt you like your own shadow as you remember your loss; how I sapped you of the one thing you wanted the most. Power, infinite power. You will be just a weak, lonely man haunting the earth and haunted by the powers that you once had" said she and raised her hands up high, summoning all the light in the world. Her eyes closed and hands up until every single sunbeam had been sucked into her being; she was no longer the Sun Summoner, she had become the Sun herself. And then I realized the meaning of it all. **She planned to kill herself while taking away my powers**.

"Alina, Please don't. I am your villain, I am your culprit, punish me, not yourself." But before the words had escaped from my mouth, she had connected the bridge between us. A bright stream of light emanated from her hands and engulfed me in its glow. My eyes blinded by the glare, my mind numb, my lips saying "Alina, Please don't." Through that blur, I saw the stream of light expand and form a sphere, more like a ball of fire around us, its glare making us invisible to the ones standing outside it.

Through a dry smile hanging on her lips, she said "Enjoy your eternity, Aleksander" and then a roaring laughter broke out from her lips amid the tears glistening on her face. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, I saw the shadows leave my body. I felt the irony of it all. All my lonely years, I craved power and now that it was leaving me, I didn't care.

"This will kill you, Alina. You need to live. The world needs your light. End my immortal journey. I don't want to be alone again" said I straddling across to her to stop the madness that she was up to.

"This is your end, Aleksander and mine. I don't want to live through eternity. The world doesn't need another Darkling. "She held my palms and the shadows started fleeing my body, filling the sphere of light around us. Suddenly we were covered by blackness, which was a continuous pattern of growing thick from my shadows and thinning out as she took them in. It was a pain I had never known before but what was hurt more was that the girl whom I had come to love after a millennium was dying leaving me behind to suffer. " _I won't let her die for my sins_ " I thought and jerked away my hands from hers. I bent down and lifted a knife fallen near her feet.

"Put this through my heart" I said "but don't give me two deaths. I have died enough for a thousand years" but she didn't blink. She stood still staring at me and then the darkness around us was gone. Vanished into the soul of the one girl I loved. I knew her body won't survive the powers of both darkness and light. It would kill her.

I threw the knife and took her in my arms. She didn't move. I lifted my hand slowly, put it on her collar and invoked all the power left in me to break it apart. It didn't move. Being a living amplifier, I knew I could do it but she had invoked too much power and I had too little time. And then she became limp falling in my arms like a dry leaf. My vision blurred, my eyes stung and I realized that I had tears in my eyes.

I held her tight as if my embrace would stop her soul from leaving her body. She was the only hope for my redemption and I couldn't let her die. I took the knife and hit it hard on her bracelet. It made a deep gash on her wrist and blood oozed out from where the bracelet had been. _I won't let you slip away from me, Alina._

As soon as I had broken the fetter, there was a big blast and there was light all round us, just like a few minutes ago. A jolt passed through her body and I was thrown away. As I looked around, there was chaos everywhere. Earth was shaking badly and there were cries all around us. It stopped as abruptly as it had started and the shadows started leaving her body along with the light. Golden and black beams entwined with each other were leaving her body as it lay limp waiting for the powers to leave it together with her soul. But then she flinched. I saw her left hand tremble.

I ran towards her. I ran towards my Alina. It felt great to know that she was alive. I raised her head in my lap and ran my hands through her white hair, my tears falling on her cheeks as I bent my lips to meet hers. Then she opened her eyes but she didn't push me away. She just lay still as I wrapped my hands around her in a tight embrace.

"Why didn't you let me die"she asked in a feeble voice

"I couldn't" said I and hugged her tightly.

"But you lost your powers. That was all you ever wanted" she asked, her eyes searching mine.

"Yes I lost my powers and I didn't realize until today that it was not power that I had wanted. Power was just a balm for my loneliness. Not until I saw you almost die in that orb of light did I realize how much you mean to me."

Suddenly she jerked me and tried to get up, flinching with pain, her eyes searching everywhere and said "Where are the others? You killed them all. No…. We killed them all. We are murderers….. Now I am also a Darkling like you" she stumbled as she said these words and crouched on the ground holding her head in her hands and sobbing through her tears.

I looked around. We were in the woods. How was that possible? We had been fighting in the Fold; there was sand all around us and ….and dead bodies."Aleksander, Aleksander" I heard a faint voice somewhere. It was not Alina's. It sounded familiar. Then the voice grew closer and I turned around to see a Grisha lady in a black _kefta_. I knew that face too well. It was my mother. "Aleksander, where were you? I heard loud explosions and saw lightening. It was so strong that…" she stopped as she saw my hands full of blood"Why is there blood on your hands? Are you hurt?"

"Who is that girl" she asked as her eyes fell on Alina. "And why is she bleeding"

My mother had stopped calling me Aleksander long ago. Then the truth hit me


	2. Chapter 2

**The truth**

 **i)**

As my mind reeled from the truth that lay all around us, my eyes started looking for clues to deny everything in disbelief, until they settled on that chapel; and then all my doubts melted and the mystery unraveled itself in front of my eyes.

"Too much blood loss. Even you look no good. I'll go get a healer" said my mother, snapping me back to attention.

I looked at Alina and realized that she was searching for answers to the same questions that were dogging me."Where are we? We were fighting on the Fold?" she asked in a feeble voice holding her wrist as it oozed blood.

"This is the Fold" said I as I took a step and sat beside her.

Her eyes searched mine as she tried to grasp the meaning of my words.

"This is the Fold before the darkness, before I became the Darkling."

"How… is it possible? You… are lying. It can't be." She said amid the tears rolling down her cheeks.

By then, mother was back with the Healer that I didn't seem to recognize. He looked at me and then at Alina." Who is she? And why is she wearing a blue Kefta. Have never seen her in Little Palace." he asked looking across from me to mother. Getting no reply from either, he focussed his attention on Alina.

Then mother turned towards me and said "I want to know what's happening. One moment you are next to me practicing your powers and the next you are in the middle of a jungle with a wounded girl."

The truth of what I had seen hit Alina as she looked at my mother. Her youthful skin and her raven hair were unlike what she had known her to be.

"Mother, I will talk to you later. Right now, she needs rest."

"Make sure. Young Boy." she said and left the place.

 **ii)**

She was resting in a small cottage outside the Little Palace when I walked in. She was too weak from her injuries and merely opened her eyes. The healer had attended to her wound but the powers had taken their toll. Her eyes had become two deep black pits and her skin ghostly white. As I walked closer to sit beside her, she made an effort o sit up. I supported her head and put a cushion under her back. Her searching eyes were teeming with a million questions.

"The Healer told me you wanted to leave. Alina, you have lost too much blood. It's dangerous. After your recovery, I'll arrange something but until then, please. "I said and started to leave but she held my hand and her lips moved feebly "Answers…. Now"

Her hands were shivering, yet she held mine with all the strength in her body. So I sat down on the chair next to her bed and said"When you started summoning the Sun and my shadow soldiers, the powers overpowered you and you fainted….. I couldn't see you dying. So I broke your fetter. It reversed everything around us and all that the dark powers had wrought upon Earth."

"What about the others? My Army, my friends, Zoya, Tamar? "She asked, her eyes closed and her lips white as she drew in a long breath, her body flinching as she did.

I went to the corner and fetched her glass of water." They are memories now. As that fetter changed my past, your past changed too because of the connection that we had."

She suddenly seemed to remember something as her lips moved vaguely and all I could make out were broken words in between" David told…. Collar….destruction"

"Oh. What have you done, Aleksander…..I can't go back to my world now…. I can't hug my Mal one last time. Why couldn't you let me die? The only thing you ever gave me was pain. Why couldn't you just…" her voice trailed off and tears rolled from her eyes as she spoke.

I stood there, feeling helpless, a feeling I had long abandoned since the day I wore Black kefta. I moved close to her and held her hands. She tried to jerk them away but I was determined to make her understand that our fates were linked together, long before she was born."

"Leave me" she said trying to wriggle out of my hold.

"Alina, our destinies connected on the day Morozova created that amplifier. You were meant to enter my life. You were the reason I waited for so long. You can fight all you want but this is the truth."

She rubbed the scar across her palm and said through clenched teeth" You are a murderer. You killed the people I cared for, the people I loved."

"I am no saint, Alina. I have sinned and I have faltered but it is afresh beginning for me, for us. Fate has given me another chance to redeem and I can't do it without you. That loneliness ate away my soul for ages and made me the monster that I was. The past is reversed. Now there are no wars, no dead people, no Shadow Fold and no Darkling. Only you can save me from falling in that pit of darkness again. Only you can redeem me, Alina. You are my redemption" I said holding her hands and resting my forehead on them, like a prayer.

"Leave me and never come back." she said without looking at me.

 **(To be continued)**


End file.
